The Internet provides unprecedented access for advertising to an ever-increasing number of potential customers ranging from businesses to individuals. Money expended for online advertising in the United States alone, is in the billions of dollars per year, and continues to increase with no end in sight. A company contacts the website owner and procures ad space on one or more web pages hosted at that site. Ads can be presented on web pages in different forms and types of multimedia content where the size of the web page real estate can be a cost factor, as well as the position of the ad on the web page. Accordingly, businesses recognize the value in online advertising and continue to seek better ways to reach these potential customers with information about their products and services.
At a high level, conventional advertising techniques typically employ mass media (e.g., television and radio) and heavily traveled areas such as major highways as principal means for reaching large numbers of viewers and listeners with the hope that he or she will see the advertisement (e.g., in the form of billboards or television commercials) and make a purchase. However, such techniques are limited, since the advertisement has to be created to reach a broad spectrum of potential customers.
The Internet and its myriad of websites and millions of users provides a convenient and more effective mechanism for presenting advertisements. Thus, a better solution would be to reach more individuals at a lower level, such as the capability of going “one-on-one” with each potential customer and to target each individual based on his or her preferences, tastes, buying habits, wants, needs, and so on, to offer the most effect means for making a sale.
In that online user activities and access information can now be tracked in the form of cookies, for example, thereby providing information about the buying habits, goals, intentions, and needs large numbers of users, it then becomes possible to target groups of users, for example, based on this information alone. Accordingly, the quality and value received from online advertising can translate into potentially huge returns to the advertising dollars of businesses. In view of such lucrative opportunities, businesses continue to search for new and more effective mechanisms for advertising.